By FRANCESCA MOLD political reporter
The National Party has mounted an aggressive attack on Health Minister Annette King and her portfolio management in the hope it will prove to be the chink in the Government's armour.
National MPs yesterday bombarded Mrs King with parliamentary questions as part of a deliberate strategy to
bring health back into the spotlight.
The Opposition has targeted Mrs King as one of the Government's weaker ministers but yesterday she batted away potentially curly questions and blamed National's past policies for health's major problems.
There has been a gradual build-up in the number of questions National has asked Mrs King during question time in the House.
Yesterday, five National MPs, including leader Jenny Shipley and her deputy, Bill English, attacked Mrs King with questions on issues ranging from the restructuring of the Christchurch Hospital emergency department to cost-cutting at Northland Health.
Many of the minister's replies were lost under a barrage of interjections as National continued the more boisterous performance it has adopted since its annual conference in Auckland last weekend - when Michelle Boag was elected president on a platform of reinvigorating the party.
Mrs King tried to unsettle Mrs Shipley in her responses by describing her as the "old hearthbrush" compared to Ms Boag, who was the "new broom". Fellow minister Trevor Mallard called out, "Boring," when Mr English rose to ask his question.
National's strategy of targeting health stretches back to before the May Budget when it warned that the Government would be miserly in its health funding. Those concerns were played down by Mrs King, who said Opposition MPs should wait and see.
Since then it has been revealed that district health boards, which had a combined surplus of $18.4 million in December, had slipped to a deficit of $39 million by March.
There has also been a slide in funding for elective surgery, down from $525 million to $407 million plus $84 million previously tagged as one-off funding added to the baseline budget.
National's focus on health fits in with its strategy of attacking the Government's plan to build a multi-billion dollar superannuation fund, which it says is salting away money that could better be used to boost social services spending.
